


“I’ve waited for this moment for a long time.”

by orphan_account



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Drabble, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 15:04:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19320595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Taken from the angst/fluff prompt - 58. “I’ve waited for this moment for a long time.”Jacob’s dying on top of a mountain with four broken ribs and a punctured lung. Just like Joseph said. Right down to the time, place and injuries.Only, Rook’s never been one for making prophecies come true and has something different in mind.





	“I’ve waited for this moment for a long time.”

Jacob waits for a bullet to rip through the bottom of his skull, for a knife to spear through his chest, for a pair of calloused hands to cradle the sides of his face, only to snap his neck.

He deserves that - all of that, each and every one. Knowing Rook - his pride and joy, his perfect soldier, his baby girl - she’d do them in that precise order.

A bullet to the brain stem will paralyze him, but it wouldn’t kill him. No, that’d simply mean that he‘d feel pain and there wouldn’t be a damn thing he could do to stop it.

The knife - _switchblade,_ the back of his skull reminds him, the infamous switchblade that has slit throats, sliced off digits and limbs with medical precision, severed major arteries without a grain of hesitation, taken hundreds of lives because she doesn’t have a religion, but she does have a handful of philosophies, one of which bring that, _“Anyone can pull a trigger - a mindless fool, a spineless coward, a heartless traitor - but it takes a purposeful beast to use a blade.”_ \- will splinter through his chest as easily as melted butter.

Breaking his neck would be the most intimate - and fatal - wound of them all.

A shiver unfurls through his spine, hearing her bittersweet monologue about how deliciously satisfying the crack of bones is beneath her fingers.

Jacob beckons her over with a waggle of his fingers.

Rook stares at him - five, six, seven seconds, an indecipherable look that he could’ve spent days trying to pick apart, but would never come close to figuring out - before she begrudgingly stalks forward, the light limp in her step a courtesy of Jacob’s rifle and the bullet that ripped through her thigh.

To which Jacob snares her jacket in his fingers and forces her to meet him, their noses brushing, breathing the same air as his icy blues peer into her liquid gold pools.

Through the heaving of his lungs and the blood pooling in the back of his throat, Jacob opens his mouth to talk about history repeating itself, about civilizations being built only to be razed to the ground, about her doing exactly what Joseph said and not even fucking knowing it.

He isn’t able to get as much as a single syllable of this monologue - last words - out before Rook cuts him off.

**_“I’ve waited for this moment for a long time.”_ **

She’s talking about killing him, that’s the only conclusion Jacob can draw after all the blood that’s been spilled in the last six weeks, but he couldn’t be farther from the truth.

While his hands are bunched in the lapels of her jacket, Rook’s right hand coils around the cord of the bunker key dangling from the front of his shirt, her left hand curls around the back of his neck and she kisses him.

Of all possible outcomes that’d been bouncing around his skull like a broken record - like his shattered music box that was nothing but gears and wires littering the ground around them - this is not the one Jacob could’ve imagined in his wildest dreams.

Though...

That isn’t to say that it’s unwelcome or unwanted.

The precise opposite, to be more accurate.

Burly fingers tighten in the worn material of her jacket, yanking her closer.

Sharp teeth dig into the skin of his bottom lip, piercing the flesh and spilling blood, eliciting a growl that rumbles deep in his chest, a sneer that curls his lip - which is enough of an opening for Rook to slip her tongue inside his mouth and spill his blood across both of their palates.

She breaks away - far too soon, in Jacob’s opinion, but he isn’t that much of a sap to say so.

He does, however, part his lips to ask why she’d stopped, but when he inhales a gallon of air to get the fuel for the question, his chest burns like a liter of battery acid is scalding his torso.

“Pneumothorax,” she mumbles against his lips, pecking his chin, calloused hands gingerly massaging the space of pain beside his lungs.

Jacob Seed did not purr at the relief that her wonderful, dexterous fingers offered him.

“The fuck... is that...?” Jacob pants, breathless from the kiss and the searing pain in his side.

“Medical definition? A collapsed lung. Layman definition? I kicked you in the ribs one of them punctured your lung and air’s flooding your chest like a balloon.”

“... End of the line, then.”

“Wouldn’t say that...”

Rook kisses a scarred cheek, lips trailing down the stubble of his throat, traces the scar tissue of his collarbones with a delicacy that borders reverence.

When her head slumps against his shoulder, she reaches for something at her hip - Jacob can’t see at this angle - but the click of a button is impossible to confuse with anything else, alongside the static that fills the silence.

“All right, Prince Charming - time for your grandiose entrance.”

Jacob has no idea how he didn’t hear the deafening rumble of the plane’s turbines - the blood rushing through his ears dampens everything that isn’t the vicious, lethal, satisfied deputy.

The plane executes a perfect landing, leaving Jacob baffles because he’d only known one person who could take-off the ground, soar through the skies and land the aircraft with an elegance and expertise that’d baffle and amaze veteran and professional pilots alike.

But it couldn’t be - they’d found the scorched, broken pieces of John’s plane scattered all over Holland Valley, the fire from the explosion burning his plane beyond recognition, the heat reducing his brother - his baby brother - to nothing more than a heap of bones and ashes.

Then the door opens.

And if Jacob thought that his chest and ribs hurt like a son of a bitch, it’s nothing compared to the erratic, desperate, yearning with each and every beat of his heart.

“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?”

John chuckles, an attempt at being nonchalant, but his voice cracking in the middle of the question shatters the facade.

“Johnny... Is that... Is that really you?”

“It’s really me, Jacob... It’s really me.”

Rook sidesteps just as John barrels into Jacob, tears flowing down his cheeks, hiccuping sobs tearing out of his throat.

_“I’ve missed you so much.”_

“You missed me? For fuck’s sake, John - I thought you’ve been dead for the last six weeks. I couldn’t protect you when we were kids, _I thought I failed you again—“_

“You may be the eldest of The Seedlings - as our dearest, darling Rook has dubbed us - but you‘re definitely the densest one. The only reason Joseph and I are alive are because you endured the beatings from the beasts we had for parents. The only reason why I didn’t overdose on a cocktail of drugs and went to rehab was because I refused to believe you were dead. I knew you were out there somewhere, I had to find you, I had to know that one of the only two people I loved was okay. Jacob... Joseph might be the head of Eden’s Gate, but you’re the patriarch of our family. Don’t you ever forget that.”

Rook’s stepped - limped - to the edge of the cliff, giving the brothers their moment of privacy, simultaneously making a radio call.

King’s more medically-inclined than she is, would make an excellent surgeon, could be rolling in millions of dollars of blood money - the good blood money, the sort of blood money that grateful family members have no qualms about handing over when you’d saved their child’s, sibling’s, parent’s lives, the sort of blood money that lets you sleep soundly at night, the sort of blood money that doesn’t only open The Pearly Gates at the end of the line, but earns you a VIP pass.

But, of course, that isn’t his style. King is more interested in helping out people without earning anything in return. Equivalent exchange isn’t in his language - he’d rather give and not get back. Rook isn’t sure how they haven’t killed each other by now - the polar opposites they they are - but one irrefutable fact is that they balance each other out and that’s the only reason neither of them are dead in a drainage ditch.

Yet.

Rook relays the extent of the damage - broken ribs, bottom four on the left side, a punctured lung from the result of one of them, alongside plenty of bruises and gashes, none of which are fatal but would be a hell of a show to see this 6”5 giant of a gingerbread mountain-man hiss at the sting hydrogen peroxide.

King asks where he’ll be working.

Rook answers John’s living room.

King asks what’s _her_ damage.

Rook answers nothing that a bottle of scotch and a few bandaids can’t fix.

King sighs, knowing that entailed he’d be cleaning up not one but two Darwinistic dumbasses today, asks for her approximate location so he can send reinforcements.

Rook chuckles, disregarding the hiss in her belly from the gunshot, covering up the breathless noise with the nonchalant answer that she’d texted an unparalleled huntress and an incredibly philosophic daddy’s boy to head over to her coordinates.

And to bring the county’s diabetic mascot.

 _“Don’t die,”_ King’s voice crackles through the radio, a tone that’s equal-parts authoritative and exasperated.

“When have I ever?” Rook answers, laughing when King grumbles, murmuring that he’d be at the ranch in fifteen minutes.

Perfect timing, because the flight would take around thirty.

Hooking her radio to her belt, Rook reaches inside her jacket pocket and fishes out an orange prescription bottle with the label scratched off.

Good thing, too - nobody would let this within her grasp, let alone ingest what’s inside, if they’d known the concoction of drugs she’d just swallowed dry.

Sure, there’s a chance she’d go into cardiac arrest with the sheer amount of drugs soaking into her bloodstream, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood Tweak, but then again, she has three poorly bandaged, leaking bullet wounds and a few fractured bones.

Can’t expect her to go liberate a bunker _sober._

“Hate to do this to you two—“ Rook interrupts, stuffing the bottle back in her jacket, clapping her hands together, smiling like The Cheshire Cat, “— but I’m afraid I’ll have to interrupt this touching family reunion for breaking news. King’s heading over to John’s ranch to set-up shop for patching up Big Brother. So, to put this delicately - you two need to get the fuck out of here.”

“Ever the eloquent little deputy,” John muses, crossing his arms, eyeing her with a mixture of reprimand and amusement.

“Aren’t I?” Rook smiles, sharp and crooked, before she’s reaching over and gingerly plucking the bunker key from around Jacob’s neck.

Only for a rough, large hand to snare around her wrist, startling John and Rook from the speed and strength of the action.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Jacob growls, a wolf poising to sever the jugular and devour the body whole.

“Heading to your bunker, chief. I slaughtered the toy soldiers in the Veteran’s Center, but there are plenty left in your little underground shelter. Not to mention the three dozen prisoners and a mentally deranged deputy. Not that I really have any place to judge, of course.”

“You have three bullet wounds - you aren’t going anywhere.”

“And whose fault is that?”

Jacob’s maw snaps closed, but he doesn’t break his stare.

“I’ll be fine - I’ve got the calvary coming and everything. If John doesn’t get you back to his ranch within the hour, though - you won’t be. Quit being an idiot and get in the fucking plane.”

There’s a solid minute where neither of them back-down, where the tension is so thick that they’d an axe to slice through it, that John shifts his weight from foot-to-foot because he can feel the fight that’s seconds away from breaking out—

“... You know what to do.”

Rook blinks down at the rifle, speechless that he didn’t only not put-up a fight, but essentially gave her his blessing by handing her a weapon - his favorite weapon, to be precise, the one that’d been used to tear through her shoulder, thigh and stomach not fifteen minutes earlier - that she could’ve used to nail a bullet between his eyes.

But she’s already saved two of the four Seedlings.

Would be a shame not to collect the whole set at this point.

Rook nods, slings the strap of the rifle over her shoulder, the unmistakable rumble of an engine echoing in the distance.

Rook’s hardly taken a step before large, worn fingers curl around her bicep, stopping her in place once more.

Only to have one last weapon placed in her hands.

Jacob’s hunting knife.

He’s bestowed weapons - scratch that, his two favorite weapons - to her.

This isn’t just a blessing.

This is a coronation.

She opens her mouth to argue that he isn’t dying, that she isn’t a charity case and that she has enough weapons stashed on her person right now to take down a militia.

The evidence of this being each and every corpse back at St. Francis Veterans Center.

But she doesn’t get the chance to do so before he slices in, tangling his fingers in her hair, resting his forehead against hers in the only affectionate gesture he knows.

“Cull the herd.”

Rook grins, sharp canines gleaming in the moonlight.

“Have I ever told you how fucking gorgeous you are when you’re ordering me to slaughter the weak?”

For the first time in his life, Jacob isn’t only thankful but relieved for the scars marring his cheeks, which do an excellent job of camouflaging the blush that’s flooding them.

Rook laughs, pecks one of his flaming cheeks as a goodbye, and sheathes the weapons to start her trek down the mountain.

John doesn’t waste any time, slings one of Jacob’s arms over his shoulders and helps him to the passenger side of the plane.

There isn’t a word spoken between them until the plane is thousands of feet above the ground and the mountain where Jacob should’ve died and Rook should’ve left his corpse is nothing but a speck in the distance.

“So...” John starts nonchalantly.

Judging by the smile John is terribly stifling, Jacob bites back a sigh at the inevitable interrogation about the... _nature_ of his relationship with Rook.

That being said, he isn’t ready for what John asks.

“Gorgeous, huh?”

Jacob knows that hitting the pilot of an aircraft - when they’re soaring 15,000-feet in the air, no less - is possibly one of the dumbest things anyone can do in aerial history.

Doesn’t stop him from cuffing the back of John’s head.

Doesn’t stop the plane from careening just a few degrees to the side.

Doesn’t stop John from laughing - teasing, good-natured, happy, a noise that Jacob hasn’t heard in over thirty years, since they were children - as he balances out the plane easily.

Doesn’t stop Jacob from smiling so wide that his blushing cheeks turn into aching ones.

Doesn’t stop him from thinking about Rook’s taste - blood, bourbon, berries.

Doesn’t stop The Soldier from aching for the feel of The Spartan in his arms.

_Come back to me, pup._

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt list is still up on Tumblr, folks - if you’re interested, feel free to drop a request. That being said, writer’s block is a bitch and shipping & handling time may vary. But, rest assured, your package will be delivered. Scout’s honor. 🐻


End file.
